And the Rest of It

It's time for the world to seal off China:

Liz Truss has defended the Falklands as “part of the British family” after China backed Argentina’s claim over the South American islands.

The Foreign Secretary tweeted that “China must respect the Falklands’ sovereignty” after Argentinian president, Alberto Fernandez, met with China’s President Xi on the fringes of the Beijing winter Olympics.

According to a statement on London’s Chinese Embassy website, the two leaders spoke of their “deep friendship” and Argentina signed up to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, a state-backed campaign for global influence.

But they also signed an agreement in which China reasserted its support for Argentina’s claim to the Falklands, while Mr Fernandez backed Xi’s one-China policy, which claims Taiwan as its own.

 

And why do we make deals with China?

Why?

Is it because it is so trustworthy and tolerant?:

Chinese President Xi Jinping met Sunday with leaders from Poland and Pakistan in a flurry of diplomacy on the sidelines of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games.

Xi told President Andrzej Duda that China seeks to further improve ties with Poland, whose warm relationship with Beijing has not sat well with main rival the United States.

 

(Sidebar: oh, Poland, why would you do this?)

** 

By not doing more to stop China’s genocide of the Uyghurs, Canada is ignoring its obligations as laid out in a United Nations convention, a newly filed Federal Court application alleges. 

 

Yeah, it's the UN, so ...

**

South Korean politicians and activists criticised what they called China's "cultural appropriation", after a woman appearing to be wearing Korean traditional dress appeared among those representing China's different ethnic groups during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Games on Friday.

China is home to around two million ethnic Koreans, half of whom live on the Chinese side of the North Korean border, and they are a recognised minority group whose language and culture are granted official protection.

South Koreans have expressed ire in the past over recent Chinese claims that some aspects of Korean culture such as kimchi, a Korean side dish made with fermented cabbage, or traditional Korean dress called hanbok, are of Chinese origin.

 

Oh, Koreans, don't you understand that China sees you as its chattel?

You need to get all convoy on them. 

"The Squid Games" may not be fiction.

Also:

The U.S. special representative for North Korea will meet with Japanese and South Korean officials later this week, the U.S. State Department said on Sunday, following a series of ballistic missile tests U.S. officials said Pyongyang launched last month.

U.S. Ambassador Sung Kim will travel to Honolulu from Feb. 10-15 to host a trilateral meeting "to discuss a broad range of issues, including the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," the department said in a statement.

North Korea has long been banned from conducting nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches by the U.N. Security Council, but the United States and others have said it carried out nine ballistic missile launches in January - the most in a single month in the history of the country's nuclear and missile programs.

 

 

Odd. This didn't make the usual news cycle:

A man has been charged after four people were injured when a Jeep ran into a group of protesters who were participating in the Freedom Convoy rally on the grounds of the legislature in Winnipeg on the night of Feb. 4.

 

This government is brilliant at losing money:

After facing interruptions caused by volatile weather and the pandemic, the Trans Mountain expansion is expected to run over budget by several billion dollars — and the federally owned pipeline project won’t be completed this year as planned.

Work to expand the oil pipeline is now forecast to cost more than $17 billion and likely won’t be done until sometime in 2023, sources say.

Ottawa purchased the pipeline almost four years ago from Kinder Morgan Canada for $4.4 billion after it appeared the private owners were set to walk away from the expansion as it faced a series of hurdles to be built by late 2020.

At the time, the project’s price tag was pegged at $7.4 billion, but soon moved higher. It climbed to $12.6 billion in early 2020 and is headed up again.

** 

Canadian consumers are paying artificially high prices for milk and cheese because U.S. exporters are being deliberately shut out of the market, despite promises made to let them in, an ongoing trade dispute alleges.

A tribunal ruled in December that Canada violated the terms of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA) by setting aside the vast majority of low-tariff imports from the U.S. exclusively for use by its own dairy processors.

Sending imports direct to processors means the trickle of milk and cheese coming into Canada is mainly being used in the food manufacturing process, such as butter used for croissants, or combined with Canadian dairy and packaged as a domestic brand.

“Canada’s tariff-rate quota administration policies fail to allow dairy exporters to Canada to effectively compete with domestic products,” said International Dairy Foods Association senior vice-president Matt Herrick.

 

 

Sure. I totally believe that this government would be accountable:

Suspending MPs caught in ethical violations would be effective, Ethics Commissioner Mario Dion said yesterday. Currently the only consequence for breach of the Conflict Of Interest Code For MPs is a public apology: “It never went any greater than that.”

 

 

Sue the crap out of them, Sarah:

Sarah Palin’s libel suit against The New York Times went to trial Thursday in a case over the former Alaska governor’s claims the newspaper damaged her reputation with an editorial linking her campaign rhetoric to a mass shooting.

 

Not at all quiet on the eastern front:

Russia on Saturday sent a pair of long-range nuclear-capable bombers on patrol over its ally Belarus amid spiraling tensions over Ukraine.

The Russian Defense Ministry said the two Tu-22M3 bombers practiced interacting with the Belarusian air force and air defense during a four-hour mission. The flight followed several similar patrols over Belarus, which borders Ukraine to the north.

The mission came as the Kremlin has moved troops from Siberia and the Far East to Belarus for sweeping joint drills. The deployment added to the Russian military buildup near Ukraine, fueling Western fears of a possible invasion.

Russia has denied any plans of attacking Ukraine, but urged the U.S. and its allies to provide a binding pledge that they won't accept Ukraine into NATO, won't deploy offensive weapons, and will roll back NATO deployments to Eastern Europe. Washington and NATO have rejected the demands.

** 

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz signalled on Sunday he was open to deploying more troops to Lithuania to bolster NATO's eastern flank in response to a build-up of Russian troops near the borders of Ukraine.

The United States already ordered about 3,000 extra troops to bolster NATO in Poland and Romania in response to the fears of a Russian invasion of the former Soviet republic.

"We are ready to do all that is necessary to strengthen" the German-led battlegroup in Lithuania, Scholz said in an interview with ARD broadcaster shortly before his overnight flight to Washington to meet with U.S. President Joe Biden.

 

 

And now for something completely different:

A century after Ernest Shackleton’s ship Endurance sank in the waters of Antarctica, resulting in one of the greatest survival stories in the history of exploration, a team of modern adventurers, technicians and scientists is setting sail to find the wreck.

With a crew of 46 and a 64-member expedition team aboard, a South African icebreaker is set to leave Cape Town on Saturday, bound for the Weddell Sea. Once there, the team hopes to find the wreck and explore it with two underwater drones.

Getting there won’t be easy. Crushed by pack ice in 1915, the 144-foot-long Endurance is sitting in 10,000 feet of water. And this isn’t just any water: In the Weddell, a swirling current sustains a mass of thick, nasty sea ice that can be a match even for modern icebreakers.

** 

All because his parents refused to abort him, a boy whose mother was told he would never live past the age of 2 has recently celebrated 17 years of life with some of his favorite people—local police officers.

Joshua Bourassa, of Pennsylvania, has Krabbe disease, an inherited condition that destroys the protective coating of nerve cells in the brain, and eventually the nervous system, resulting in a massively reduced life expectancy. Patients rarely live past their second birthday.

But Josh did, and his mother, 40-year-old Rebecca Bourassa, chose to celebrate her amazing son’s senior year with a special photoshoot.

Dressed in police uniform gifted by Gibson state police, “Trooper Josh” looked the part. Rebecca told The Epoch Times that photographer Erika’s photos were “the best senior pictures ever.”

** 

A lifelong lover of dogs—especially German shepherds—Pamela Mobbs left a gift of over $32,000 from her estate to the Volusia Sheriff’s K-9 officers after passing away in October 2020 at the age of 90.

The sum is to be divided exactly in half, respectively going toward supplying bulletproof vests for K-9 units in the field and training additional dogs for the force.